Just started this group...

[Daniel Parker]

At http://blog.behindlogic.com I posted this about "True Data Portability":

...full integration is still a step ahead of us. Every site still has its own language. Each programmer has to make up his own language for his app or service to speak (it's called an API). An API (Application Programming Interface) is "a specification, that defines the means and language of communication with an application." Almost all web services have an API responsive to the same means of communication: HTTP. But the language of communication is still different: each web developer ends up making up his own.

What we need is common terminology, common concepts that define an object (a package of data, a record, etc). REST shows an aspect of this, inferring that any object should respond to (at least) four verbs: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE. In the same way, but going a step further, there are common concepts that we can all apply to common data objects:

• Object: Package of custom data. Read, Update, perhaps Append.
  
• Listing: several instances of Object in their abbreviated form. Read (with filtering options).
  
• Collection: several instances of Object in their complete form. Read (with filtering options), Append.

37Signals has debuted a very important piece with ActiveResource -- calling convention to dictate common terminology. Using "include" to mean you want the object an associated object embedded is one example, using parameters the same name as model properties in order to filter your results is another convention. What we need is more of this, but re-thinking it from the concepts at the foundation of data.

Let the discussion start! I'm going to post soon a document with the beginnings of an API aimed to be data-type agnostic, flexible and not limiting. Everything is subject to examination.

~Daniel

--
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